A Crazy Thing
by ElanorRose
Summary: Joanne, after working for a long evening, pauses to give some attention to an impatient Maureen. Oneshot, pure, unadulterated fluff. T for Joanne's mouth.


Joanne is hunched over her law books; vulture-like, her shoulders slump in exhaustion and boredom. Her eyes ache, tired from reading in the dim light their small bedroom lamp provides. The city's grown dark, the streetlamps outdoors casting shadows along the bare floor of their flat. The silhouette of a tree branch just outside their second-story window spangles the bed with a lace-like pattern, soon disrupted with the twist of sheets and the heavy _thwump_ that follows as Maureen sits down.

Joanne blinks as a pointed foot enters her vision, each toe tipped with a different choice of color. She can tell that Maureen's been looting Collins' apartment again; the colors she wears are all ones picked carefully by Angel for use when she was in the hospital, intent to have some sort of last pleasure as she tried not to think about wasting away. _God, she's got to stop that_, Joanne thinks, _whether she's using them in memoriam or no, she's still stealing away Collins' memories._

"God, Pookie, you're such a snore, sometimes. Really." The voice comes from below the bed, and Joanne looks up to see Maureen dangling upside down off the end. Well, really, Joanne sees the bottom of her torso; the rest has disappeared, and is probably currently stretching across the floor in that catlike way she has.

"Snore? Um, sorry, I'm actually trying to make a living for us. It's nice to have, you know, necessities. Like clothes on our backs. Food's always fun, too, especially when you're hungry."

Maureen pulls herself up again, hair mussed and falling across her face in tangled curls. Joanne bites her lip with a smile. Ah, the ever-present bedroom hair. Maureen can't seem to ever keep it tidy. Right now, one strand trails across her mouth in a quite haphazard fashion, giving Joanne the intense urge to brush it away.

There is the tug of blankets as Maureen pulls a quilt from underneath Joanne, still drawn up uncomfortably at the head of the bed. She tucks it around Joanne's legs in a particularly mothering fashion, and giggles. "Your toes seem rather cold, Pookie. Care to warm them up a bit?"

Joanne smirks. "Have at me, you crazy woman." Maureen vigorously rubs them between two very soft palms, and Joanne sighs contentedly. With a toss of still-frizzy curls, Maureen manages to fit herself into Joanne's lap, and Joanne pulls her book out of Maureen's way. Maureen places a leg on either side of Joanne's hips and adjusts herself comfortably.

"You're straddling me." Joanne remarks rather pointedly.

"How very thoughtful of you to notice." Joanne feels a flick to her ribs.

"Fuck it." She tosses the book to the floor, and pulls off her glasses with an exhausted moan. "I can't _concentrate_ with you perched so provocatively on my nether regions."

Instead of the laugh Joanne expected, Maureen simply tucks her arms around Joanne's waist and clings tightly, nuzzling her head tightly under Joanne's chin. "I've missed you, sweetie."

Joanne rests a gentle hand on the crown of Maureen's thick hair, and rubs lightly. She can feel Maureen purr in contentment from some area between her breasts. She smirks. "I've missed you, too. Wanna have a baby?"

"What!" Maureen sits up abruptly.

"Well, aside from the small problem of neither of us being able to produce any sort of fertilizing agent, I think it'd be good for us."

Maureen laughs. "And that other quite _large_ problem involving you not actually ever remembering to feed yourself. If I gave you any sort of live organism to take care of, it would be _dead_ within a day, hands down."

"Well, honeybear, you're not exactly better at that task yourself." There is a pause. "God, how the hell are we still alive!"

"There _is_ the added benefit of Collins bringing us lunch every day from that sandwich place uptown. It gives us an _excuse_ to get off our collective lazy ass and eat something."

"True, true." Joanne pulls Maureen back down to hold her again, but Maureen resists, staring quixotic at the wall behind the bed.

"Do you _really_ want to have a family with me? I mean, why are we even together? We're so on-again, off-again, everyone honestly expects us to be off-again permanently at some point. But I don't want that to happen. I don't want you to go again. _Don't_ go." The words tumble out of her mouth with no pause for air. They're so desperate, Joanne really has no choice but to kiss her little by little, never enough to hurt, just enough to get her thinking clearly again.

"There's no worries of that happening, honeybear. You forget, without you I don't eat. I wither. _You'd_ wither. And honestly, with those elbows of yours, you don't need any more withering. I wouldn't wish those elbows on my most hated enemy." Maureen laughs again. "There's that sunny smile. Don't be stupid, sweet. You _are_ rather stupid, you know."

Maureen places a hand on either side of Joanne's face, making childish kiss-faces to Joanne's vague chagrin. "So? If I'm stupid, then you're _more_ than stupid."

Joanne pokes out her tongue as Maureen ruffles her braids playfully. "And as for the question of why we're together again? Just check it to the fault of a crazy little thing called love, honeybear. It's love."


End file.
